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Google's AI Mode: Reshaping How We Find What We Need
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The digital landscape is changing before our eyes. Google's new AI Mode represents a fundamental shift in how we search for information online—and the implications for businesses are enormous.
We take you on a revealing journey through Google's AI-powered search experience, demonstrating how traditional pages of results are being replaced by concise AI summaries with drastically fewer visible sources. What happens when a search that would normally display dozens of options now only shows seven products or six local businesses? Where do all the other results go? And perhaps most surprisingly—where are all the ads?
This transformation creates a challenging new reality for digital visibility. Small businesses and newcomers face an uphill battle to appear in these limited AI overviews. We discuss practical strategies to improve your chances, from creating high-quality content that larger platforms would want to feature to implementing technical SEO elements like rich snippets. For local businesses, maintaining an optimized Google Business Profile becomes more crucial than ever.
The search engine optimization landscape is struggling to adapt, with many experts simply repackaging traditional SEO advice without truly understanding what will work in this new AI-driven environment. As we navigate this uncertain territory together, one thing is clear: digital visibility is becoming more competitive than ever, and businesses need to start preparing now.
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Previewing Google's New AI Mode
Speaker 1So do you want to see the future of search engine results?
Speaker 2Yeah, let's see it.
Speaker 1So this is the future of Google and where things are going to go. It's called the AI mode. Now, I don't know if this is rolled out to everybody, but I think it's rolled out to most people.
Speaker 2So it's the thing on the side right here. It's the thing right here.
Speaker 1So if you click on it, it says meet AI mode Ask detailed questions for better responses. Okay, it says meet AI mode Ask detailed questions for better responses. And so I'm going to just type in, like what are the best running shoes, and hit enter. So this right here, what you're seeing, is most likely the future of what search engines will be Okay. So essentially it's an overview of just the answer to your question, and then they give you on the side the websites that it pulled from.
Speaker 2Can you scroll down? Is there anything? Okay, there's more information.
How AI Displays Search Results
Speaker 1Yeah, it's not like pages, yeah, it's more of like a chat gpt-esque response with, like you can see, here's some shopping results yeah right and like best trip for trail running, with some results there as well. So, like you can see, like. So it kind of breaks it down into category for this particular search. But say you asked like what's the best shoe for trail running? Let's, let's, let's refine our, our search here. So what's the best shoes for trail running?
Speaker 2It's weird they it didn't keep it. They get to read, I guess it's a lot like judging.
Speaker 1So it shows yeah, it shows your past, past searches oh, okay at least I don't know if you can go back and look up previous searches or not.
Speaker 1I would assume you could yeah it looks like there's a history right here, oh, gotcha. But like, okay, say we're, say we're searching best shoes for trail running, like we're used to seeing pages and pages of search results, right, but you can see on the left here they say they pull from 10 sites, but they're only showing three. You have to click show all let's to to get more right, oh, I'm using I'm actually using Perplexity's new browser, yeah, and it seems like a little laggy, but we'll go over that later, but anyway, so you can see, it pulls up the search results.
Speaker 2It's interesting because you're going to have to focus on more content on your pages, right? Maybe I?
Speaker 1I don't, honestly, I don't know yet because, it's so interesting we're used to pages and pages of search results. Now data shows that after the first page you're getting negligible. So it doesn't matter so it may not matter, yeah as much.
Speaker 2However, like there's like 10 and that's it I know right well, and if you look at them they're not like. I mean, some of them are right, like the eco shoes, but some of them on the side, like the. The 10 results. They're just informational echo shoes, but like they're just more informational, so go go to the side and scroll up. A lot of these are just informational pages.
Speaker 1Yeah. And they're grabbing the data from those and then from that, and then it's giving you more of a natural response to it.
Speaker 2It's also where are the ads? There's no ads in this. I'm sure you know what I also. Where are the ads? There's no ads in this. I'm sure you know what I mean.
Speaker 1Are those shopping ads or?
Speaker 2are there no ads now?
Missing Ads and Limited Results
Speaker 1These don't say sponsored. You don't know if they are or aren't, and but if people start, migrating to this and there's a lack of ads on there.
Speaker 2What are you paying for if most people are using this and it's just AI grabbing it?
Speaker 1Right, and you're only seeing four shoes. I mean here you see another three.
Speaker 2Well, so seven total, but yeah.
Speaker 1And so it's like what's going to determine which shoes are going to show? Right, we talked about this in previous episode of like you have to be on some pretty big sites in order to show in some of these AI overviews, yeah Right, and so this, this is a little concerning to me.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Like, if you want to start a business, how are you going to show up in these AI overviews? And I don't think anyone really has an answer yet. When we look at some of the big wigs in search engine optimization blogs and things like that, they're trying to spin normal SEO advice as new AI search engine optimization.
Speaker 2AI search engine optimization.
SEO for AI-Based Search
Speaker 1But it's really the exact same stuff, because I just don't think people know yet on what they need to do to show up in these search results. This is something that I would probably. If I were to do anything, I'd first of all try to make really good quality content that can be featured on other websites that people would actually want to post, and I would also look at the backend code of the website and make sure that all like there's stuff called rich snippets and things like that there's code that you can implement on your website to help search engines better understand your content.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's the way your website talks to Google right in a sense. Yeah, like.
Speaker 1I mean, obviously you can just crawl the content, but there's other stuff.
Speaker 1you can put on the back end that you don't see. To kind of give you a bit of an edge, and it's a little bit more technical. To kind of give you a bit of an edge and it's it's a little bit more technical. We obviously don't have time to go over all the technical aspects of it in like a podcast episode, but there's that. That's the only thing I can really think of, aside from create really good quality content, implement the like rich snippets in the background of your website and try to get your, your content featured on some bigger platforms. Could you do?
Speaker 2a local search, so I would like to see how the AI works with something local.
Speaker 1So pick like.
Speaker 2Denver or something and say best HVAC services in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1All right, let's give this one a shot. So if you notice like the first paragraph it's like oh, it depends on your specific needs, it said that, and the other one is like for running shoes, like oh, it depends on what your needs are, Right.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1And so, like it sets, it sets it up to have kind of more categories and to feature stuff on a category level. Let's see what it kind of does here. It says here's some top rated ones based on user reviews, so like that's kind of nice, like assuming that that is accurate, like yeah you can see kind of some more reputable ones. So for a local based business, making sure you have good reviews yeah, and you're providing.
Speaker 2It looks like they're pulling a lot of this information from the google business profile most likely right so they're using the reviews. They're using what people are saying on the business profile and what they've listed on their business profiles. As these are services, we actually do so if you don't have one or haven't optimized it, or it just is kind of there but not really connected to anything.
Speaker 1I think you're losing out on a lot of stuff. You can see here that it gives us six.
Speaker 2I guarantee you there's more than six in Denver Denver yeah, Denver's huge. There's going to be a lot more than that.
Speaker 1So I could see. I mean this is kind of interesting. It gives like a map view. You can't even really click on the map view. You can expand it, but it doesn't help, it doesn't really give you more information. And so, like if I were someone searching for HVAC services in Denver and I was using AI mode, this would not be that helpful.
Speaker 2Oh, you just scrolled up. That's interesting. Sorry. So you just scrolled up and it just goes to your last conversation. So it's very similar to like ChatGBT style. Yeah, this word I got you.
Speaker 1So like, but I would. When I look at these informational sites and I'm like, okay, yeah, it might be helpful to know exactly, like, what are some things you need to look for in a quality HVAC business? But aside from that, like, I'm like this is not that helpful to me. I would go back to the regular Google search results and scroll through the business listings that appear on, like the right side of the of the regular Google interface.
Speaker 1So, like I see this as of right now, just more informational, kind of like chat, gpt, right, yeah, I think that eventually they will adjust this to show ads, to show more listings. I, at least I hope. Otherwise, like for research, you could go to this route, but if you actually want to purchase things and see more options, it looks like the previous version is probably going to be your better, better option.
Episode Closing and Resources
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Speaker 1Check out our website at launchingproscom, where you get access to a bunch of free resources and courses designed to launch and grow your business online. Check out the links below.